File Storage

All Staff and Students have a My Documents folder, this is personal to you. Although there is currently not a set storage quota for this area, under Section 8 of the Acceptable Use Policy, "You must not deliberately or recklessly consume excessive IT resources". IT Services performs regular checks on the file server to gather data on storage sizes. If we deem the size to be excesive, IT Services will contact users to help reduce the size of their perosnal drive.

To access your "My Documents" folder you need to be logged in to a University PC or laptop, then click either the My Documents folder from the Start menu or in My Computer it will be listed as your username.

To help you manage this area please take a look at the following useful tips. Deleting files you no longer require will help improve performance of the system for all staff and students. We also advise against storing files on your desktop. If there is a large amount of data on your desktop, you will see a drastic increase of login times across our campus PCs.

As a general guide, we would recommend deleting the following file types, which can take up a large amount of storage space:

Temporary Storage

Staff and students are entitled to exchange large files using the temporary storage drive rather than emailing the file. To access this you need to be logged in to a University computer or laptop and then click My Computer it is listed as Public P: drive. Please not that this is not a place to permanently store documents, documents in this drive are automatically removed after 30 days. Please be aware that both staff and students will also be able to view and delete any files placed here.

OneDrive

Students also have access to OneDrive storage through your student email account, "Office 365". OneDrive allows you to save documents and access them from anywhere in the world. We recvommend this as a place to back-up work you have completed at home and on University premises.

Backing Up Your Work

IT Services recommend you back your work up in at least 3 different places. These can include:

Home PC/Laptop

University PCs (We back-up our file server every night)

Microsoft OneDrive

Send it in an email to yourself

External Hard Drive (HDD)*

USBs*

*External HDDs/USBs are susceptible to corruption, which we see on a regular basis. We strongly advise against saving your only copy of work to these devices and not having an alternative back-up.

If your work is lost or corrupted, we are only able to provide very basic assistance. Although we understand it can be upsetting to lose the hard work you have produced, we are not data recovery specialists and are therefore unable to assist past the basic steps we know. Furthermore, the Extenuating Circumstances panel are highly unlikely to accept work that has been lost due to it not being saved and no back-up being available. This is why we suggest to you a minimum of 3 places with a back-up.

We’re all storing more and more data on our mobile phones, tablets and laptops. But not everyone has the time to back up all their data? With the advent of cloud backup services, you no longer have to consciously back up your device. You can sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that your data is being backed up by your chosen cloud backup service. Below are just a few of the most used services:

Microsoft OneDrive

OneDrive, formerly known as SkyDrive, is Microsoft’s cloud backup solution. There are apps available for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android,…